Ribs
by Carlyn Roth
Summary: (Prequel to "Far From Their Bones") Talia describes the evolution of her early relationship with Tom Paris.


" _We'll laugh until our ribs get tough, but that will never be enough."_

-Lorde, "Ribs"

* * *

I had just turned fifteen years old when the USS Hepburn returned to Utopia Planetia for refits. After thirteen years, my family left behind our life of Klingons and deep space exploration in the Beta Quadrant to exchange it for assignments at Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco, California. Through my freshman year, I had been participating in the distance program offered by California's Academy Institute, a preparatory school that fed into Starfleet Academy; by the start of sophomore year, I was attending classes in-person.

I noticed him the moment he walked into second period Western Civilization with another boy, late by five minutes. He was tall and athletic, with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes as endless as the sky. Our instructor, Professor McKinney, stopped mid-sentence to scold the boys, but Tom flashed him a winning smile and smoothly made some excuse about forgetting which room number they were supposed to report to.

"The one on the right—that's Admiral Paris' son, Tom," Jamie Easton whispered from the desk behind me. Jamie was my first friend at the Institute—a fellow sophomore and Starfleet brat whose locker was next to mine. She was a friendly girl who had introduced herself before first period that morning, offering to catch me up on planetside life in exchange for stories about deep space. She planned to pursue command at Starfleet Academy.

"The parrises squares player?" I whispered back.

"Mhmm. Didn't I tell you he was gorgeous?"

"Didn't you also tell me he's a fuckboy?"

"Doesn't make him any less handsome."

"Just take your seats, please, gentlemen," McKinney ordered the boys.

The two boys did as they were told, shuffling towards the back of the room. Tom claimed the desk to my left, acknowledging me with a wink before lowering himself into the seat.

All through the class period, I caught him stealing glances over at me. Instinctively, I knew from his body language that it had nothing to do with the Bajoran ridges on my nose. The optimistic part of me recalled that his father and my father were now colleagues; perhaps he was simply trying to figure out if I was Admiral Peters' daughter. Most likely, I already knew, his interest was little more than excitement at having new meat at the school.

Towards the end of class, Professor McKinney paired us off for a cooperative project that we would work on incrementally throughout the year, and I, of course, was stuck with Tom. He made his attraction to me known immediately, asking me out for the first time just after class. I shook my head at him, my loose copper waves shifting with the movement of my rejection, and rolled my turquoise eyes dramatically. "Let's just get through this project, okay?" I snapped at him. "Don't fuck it up for me. I actually have goals in life."

* * *

Before the month was out, Tom had changed my mind about him—not with his easy charm, flirtatious behavior, or bad-boy reputation, but with his ability to surprise me. After he gave some much-deserved lip to Professor McKinney in class one day, I decided to relinquish the assumptions I had been holding against him like a shield. To my surprise, I found him to be sensitive, caring, and kind, with a wicked sense of humor and a deep love of flying.

It was our mutual love of flight that initially sparked our friendship. Tom himself flew for the Institute's sublight shuttle squadron—a rarity for a freshman, as he'd had to test out of the school's required flight class to do so. He insisted that I go to the try-outs that were being held in three weeks time, and I agreed. When the roster was announced, Tom was the first to inform me that I had made the team, finding me in between classes on our last day before fall break. It was with that revelation that he decided to ask me out for the second time; I replied that I simply wanted to be friends.

Tom and I quickly learned that we were natural partners in the cockpit. We came to trust one another's instincts in a rare way. Usually, the positions of pilot and co-pilot were set, with one helmsman and one navigator ops specialist per shuttle who never changed roles. Tom and I both preferred the position of helmsman, but when we realized how good we were together, we developed a rotation between us when we flew in order to share the duties more equitably. The arrangement came as a shock to the team, who knew how much Tom disliked relinquishing helm control.

* * *

It was in the cockpit of a shuttle, just after my sixteenth birthday, that my friendship with Tom Paris finally evolved into romance. We were in the midst of a summer break flight practice with our squad when a surprise ion storm moved through the area, forcing us to take shelter behind Saturn's moons. We powered down while we waited the storm out.

By that point in our relationship, Tom and I had taken to a playful sort of bantering that came easily to us. Tom was respectful of my prior insistence on friendship, and he hadn't asked me out since. But that day, as our conversation came to revolve around primary school romances, I realized that my desires had changed.

"What about you?" Tom asked after he finished telling the story of his first kiss. Having grown weary of sitting in our pilot seats, we had moved to sit together on a storage bench in the aft section of the shuttle. "When did you have your first kiss?"

"Seventh grade," I replied. "A couple of my classmates had been caught sneaking off to various nooks and crannies around the Hepburn to make out, and it was all anyone at school could talk about. My two best friends at the time were a human named Derek and a Betazoid named Salara. We were talking about the incident one day on the holodeck, and Salara found out that neither Derek nor I had ever been kissed, so she offered to teach us how."

His brow creased and furrowed slightly. "Wait a minute. Are you—do you not like guys?"

My mouth curved upward in a wicked smile as I raised one eyebrow at him. "Salara was a very pretty girl, and a good kisser. She was also very gay. And yes, before you ask, we did go steady for a brief time. But, Salara wasn't the only kiss I had that day; I also kissed Derek. And, you know what I realized?"

He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing nervously inside of his perfect throat.

"I like both girls _and_ boys," I finished with a wink.

His countenance fell slightly for a moment, showing itself through his usual projection of easy self-confidence, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. My story had given him a brief flare of hope that my rejection of his advances had merely been due to incompatible sexual orientations, but I had quickly snuffed that out by admitting that I was attracted to multiple genders. After that, he wondered why I didn't want him, and he was afraid that there was something unattractive about him.

Before he had the chance to think up some self-depreciating joke, I scooted my body close to his and brushed a feathery kiss against his lips—an invitation to make our friendship something more. Pulling back slightly and fixing my eyes on his, I whispered, "is this okay?"

He shook his head, and I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. Then, he reached a hand to my face, and said, "Not unless you plan to give me a lot more of those."

I smiled at him then, leaning my head into his hand. "Deal," I agreed, before pulling his lips to mine and giving him the most passionate kiss I'd ever had in my young life.

* * *

One weekend during winter break, Tom's parents went out of town, leaving Tom's next oldest sister, Moira, in charge of the house; Tom had just turned seventeen. Moira was studying pre-med at the University of California, Berkeley, but was home for the holiday break between semesters. Of course, she didn't much care to micromanage Tom the way his parents did, so we took the opportunity to finally explore the one line we had yet to cross.

My romance with Tom was a turbulent one, both of us being such passionate people; as friends, our disagreements had been easily redirected into playful banter, but with sexual tension added to the mix, they sometimes became explosive. Yet, that passion was also what always drew us back together with an irresistible magnetism, nervously but needfully exploring more and more of each other's bodies each time we made up. It wasn't hard to steal little moments of privacy for certain methods of sexual gratification; petting, grinding, and fingering had all provided quick resolutions to ideological differences and biological needs.

This time, though, it wasn't reconciliation that drove me to plan a sleep-over at Jamie's wherein she would help me sneak into Tom's bedroom during the later hours of the night. Never before had the opportunity to engage in a full sexual experience presented itself to us, and we were both so very hungry to taste the entire buffet of physical love.

We set upon each other immediately, a desperate flurry of unsure hands and sloppy, bruising kisses. We fumbled with each other's clothing, and, though it wouldn't be until after we had sated our lust that I would teach Tom how to work a bra, we managed to undress quickly just the same. It was a strange and confusing mix of feelings once we finally stood naked before each other, our desire to study the magnificence of each other's bodies clashing with the unrelenting drive of our adolescent hormones to complete our intended sexual act. In the end, we let our hands pursue the former and, after stumbling haphazardly into his bed, our bodies carry out the latter.

The whole affair was awkward, ungainly, and fast; but, for us, it was the most incredible awakening to the joys of youth that we had yet known outside of a cockpit. Sex was like a narcotic to us, and, after that first experience, we got quite creative in how we manipulated our parents so we could sneak away for our next fix. Even after we realized that our love for each other was more naturally platonic than romantic, and ended our dating relationship the summer before senior year, we would find ourselves from time to time still seeking each other out for that glorious high.

Together, we learned far more about love and pleasure than any class could have ever taught us. We also learned to trust each other in an entirely new way, our intimate connection creating an unbreakable bond between us that was perhaps the closest thing to telepathy that Terrans could experience together. Most people, including our parents, couldn't understand the nature of our friendship, assuming that we would eventually straighten things out and get married. We ourselves couldn't have explained our special love even if we tried, but we knew with certainty that it wasn't the big-L kind of love.

* * *

Our sexual liaisons concluded when Tom fell in love for the first time with my friend Susie Crabtree, a slightly younger but brilliant student at the Institute who had completed the curriculum early and graduated with us. She was to be my roommate when we started classes at the Academy in the fall, which would make for a much easier development of their relationship as I would be far more understanding of their need for alone time than a stranger might be. With that, we went from being reluctant project partners, to friends, lovers, fuck-buddies, and finally, wingmen.

So progressed the evolution of my unique relationship with Tom Paris.

* * *

 **A/N:** This is actually going to be the first of a series describing Talia's romantic liaisons with various Star Trek canon characters; however, the other stories will be more explicit, as I wrote them to practice for Star Trek Smut Week, and therefore cannot be posted here. One of the stories will be an updated version of "Worship," written with much better prose, I think, than the version posted here. So, if you're interested, I'll be posting them on AO3 as I finish editing them.

 **Disclaimer:** Star Trek belongs to Paramount and CBS, etc. You know the drill.


End file.
